Jill Burcum: Driving all night, eyes wide shut

It's not hard to imagine the peaceful scene inside the tour bus carrying kids home to Pelican Rapids, Minn., before it crashed last Saturday. Returning from a four-day band trip to Chicago, they'd hit the road at 10 p.m. Friday and had driven through the night. They must have brought blankets and pillows, snuggling into their seats, iPods tuning out the world.

And then, just before 6 a.m., tragedy. The bus overturned on Interstate 94 near Albertville, killing 16-year-old Jessica Weishair. Road conditions were good; the cause remains unclear.

Five years ago, I made the same dead-of-the-night run from Chicago with my daughter, trekking across Wisconsin in a rental car after we missed our Sunday-night flight. As the tragic details of the bus crash came out, I thought again of that long, dark drive and the conclusion my bleary brain reached when the Twin Cities finally came into view: I'm never going to do this again.

To be clear, authorities are investigating a variety of possible causes for the bus crash: mechanical and human. There's nothing illegal about all-night charter trips. All I can tell you is that in my experience, the challenges of piloting a vehicle on a similar route at the same time were daunting. Ever since, I've questioned the need for anybody to drive after midnight. Our bodies are hard-wired to sleep at certain times, whether we like it or not. I figured this out just west of Madison, Wis., but drove on anyway.

The official stats are that accidents linked to fatigue annually kill 1,550 people and injure 40,000. Sleep experts like Dr. Michel Cramer-Bornemann of Hennepin County Medical Center believe the toll is growing given our 24-hour society. Cramer-Bornemann is a specialist in a new field: sleep forensics. He investigates the role of drowsiness in crimes and accidents and knows from personal experience what can happen. As a medical student, he left Colorado, planning to drive straight through to Minnesota. Just before midnight, a "microsleep" happened. It's a medical term for nodding off for a second or two. His car veered off I-80 and rolled.

Cramer-Bornemann believes that late-night drivers pick a losing fight with biology. Body temperature drops. Hormone levels fluctuate. The body fights to stay in its natural rhythms. The effects are similar to driving under the influence: lapses in attention, delayed reaction time, impaired judgment and poor decisionmaking.

In my case, the poor decisionmaking started before I got on the road. I didn't want to miss work and didn't want to pay for another expensive hotel room. I'd crisscrossed the Midwest as a reporter. A six-hour trip? No problem.

Making Milwaukee was easy that cold, moonless October night. I could feel fatigue settling in on I-94 to Madison, but still felt good. The first doubts crept in near the Wisconsin Dells. I felt cold and like I needed to work at staying awake. Deer carcasses -- gruesome reminders of the need to stay alert -- were as common as mile markers.

At the I-90 and I-94 split near Tomah, we pulled into a truck stop. I downed an energy drink and filled up on coffee. I briefly considered getting a hotel room, but the caffeine boost renewed my confidence. Hey, the next big city was Eau Claire, and from there, a straight shot west to Minnesota. The trouble was that the caffeine bump soon wore off, yet the wheels' hypnotic hum continued. I turned up the radio, rolled down the window and told myself to concentrate.

In Eau Claire, another truck stop and another decision: hotel or not. Clearly, impaired judgment at work here. I guzzled a Mountain Dew, bought a big coffee and jogged around the car. If we'd made it this far, we were going home.

This is where it got strange. It must've been around 3 a.m. The caffeine was gone, leaving me muzzy-headed and with a sense that time had slowed. Nothing looked familiar on this familiar route. I blinked a lot to keep my eyes open and jiggled my legs and arms. I read road signs out loud and sang along with the radio.

I don't think I had any microsleeps. But according to Cramer-Bornemann, people often don't realize that they've happened. Chances are, I had at least one. I just managed to keep the car on the road.

It is immensely challenging to fight the body's need to sleep at night. I underestimated that, putting my daughter and myself at risk. No more. Like Cramer-Bornemann, I do everything I can to stay off the roads after midnight.

We made it home not because I was a good driver, but because I was a lucky one.

Jill Burcum is at jburcum@startribune.com.